Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category Archives: Humor

What is most interesting about the #Enough movement is that it is well-disciplined, and deadly serious. These kids aren’t just looking for a chance to cut school. They realize what’s at stake: not just their lives, but the future of the country. Most of them will be old enough to vote in 2020.

When you think about high school kids marching, the Parkland kids are from FL, many WI kids marched, and Democrat Conor Lamb just won in a PA district gerrymandered to be very red. Total Electoral College votes if these three states switched from red to blue: 59. In other words, #Enough:

Wrongo and Ms. Oh So Right have safely returned to the Mansion of Wrong after our week in warmer climes. The timing of our travel was perfect! We were away during the two nor’easters that dumped 18” of snow on the Mansion, and we are back before the next snow on Tuesday. Here is a picture of sunrise on the day we pulled out of our FL rental:

On to cartoons. Trump will try to show North Korea’s Kim the art of the deal without using his hands:

This, by a right-wing cartoonist, makes Trump look like he knows something about tariffs. That’s untrue:

Trump baffles some of the base, but others get the picture:

The GOP is still in denial about Trump’s steel tariffs:

Jefferson Beauregard Sessions redefines the “Golden Door” of American immigration:

Trump’s decision to again allow importation of elephant parts shows his character:

…in the Bay Area — where the nation’s preeminent local food movement overlaps with the nation’s tech elite — egg-laying chickens are now a trendy, eco-conscious humblebrag on par with driving a Tesla.

That’s right, the techbros are raising chickens:

In true Silicon Valley fashion, chicken owners approach their birds as any savvy venture capitalist might: By throwing lots of money at a promising flock…By charting their productivity (number and color of eggs). And by finding new ways to optimize their birds’ happiness — as well as their own…They keep the chicken brokers of the region busy finding ever more novel birds.

Wow, San Francisco has chicken brokers! And they are hiring contractors to build $20,000 coops using reclaimed materials or pricey redwood that matches their human homes. And they fail to realize that their chickens are eating better than the ~17% of Americans who don’t have enough to eat.

The Wrong family is at its annual temporary winter headquarters in Florida, enjoying this view. Blogging will be intermittent until March 12th, when we will be back in residence at the Mansion of Wrong. 2015 photo by Wrongo.

A few cartoons. When will the GOP start complaining, saying “Armed union thugs are patrolling our schools”:

Trump refines his role:

US Cyber Command chief Adm. Mike Rogers said Trump hasn’t granted him the authority to disrupt increased cyber threats. Trump, no longer jumping to the rescue. He’s just the security monitor:

We watched the time-delayed opening ceremony of the Seoul Olympics. Yesterday’s news at night.

Time seemed to move slowly, except when the cameras showed Mike Pence frowning. That guy should never get a real job in government. Wait, he has one? Ohh. Sorry.

Not shaking hands with the North Korean representatives is beneath America’s leaders. His stony behavior won’t make any friends on the global stage, and while the NoKo’s clearly are not our friends, what does not shaking hands prove?

Then there’s this: Pence skips Olympics dinner in snub to North Korean officials. Instead, he had dinner with the US team. Maybe what caused him to cancel attending the Olympic dinner was a desert, called “A Plate of Hope”. It featured a map of Korea with chocolate barbed wire dividing it. By pouring on a hot sauce, the barbed wire between the north and south melted away. How would America benefit from that?

Is it now considered appropriate to be disrespectful to your host because you don’t like his guest list? Is bailing out on the official Olympic dinner, and not shaking hands the worst Pence will do while representing us at the Olympics? Let’s hope so. On to cartoons.

A wife beater without a security clearance reading everything in the White House is the shocking part:

A few words about the Nunes memo: We had already heard all that it contains, so there’s nothing new to chew on except today’s Super Bowl nachos. Its main argument is that somehow, super-crafty Democrats, in league with the FBI, tricked four separate FISA judges into extending surveillance on suspected foreign agent, and Trump campaign staffer Carter Page. How? By omitting that the “primary source” of the information on Page was the “paid-for-by-Democrats” Steele dossier, which is “compromised by partisanship“.

Except that the Nunes Memo doesn’t prove any of this. The initial FISA warrant against Carter Page was based on the fact that the guy was a known counterintelligence risk who was in the habit of traveling to Moscow and Budapest and mixing with Kremlin officials and spies. The Steele Dossier took independent note of this, (which speaks to Steele’s ability to uncover at least some real information), but Page’s activities were already suspect, regardless of who paid Steele.

So, no matter what the Nunes memo claims, Steele’s information wasn’t crucial to their interest in Page, who had been under FISA surveillance since 2013 for his contacts with Russian spies in NYC.

The idea that the FBI only pursued Page because certain members of its management had Democratic sympathies is ridiculous. Would Trump have traded how he was treated by the FBI in October 2016 for the way Clinton was treated?

The FBI actually told the NYT that they gave Trump a clean bill of health. They incorrectly assured the public that Trump’s campaign was not being investigated for its ties to the Russians when that was exactly what they were doing. Were they in cahoots with Democrats when they did that?

Democrats must learn to pick their battles. Why scream about releasing a memo that most people (excluding Trumpsters) can now see is a nothingburger? What exactly were they trying to keep secret? Ordinary people don’t appreciate Chicken Little behavior. And most of the time they will give equal weight to Chicken Little A and Chicken Little B, because that’s how they have learned to deal with squabbling children.

Americans SO want politics to be honorable. It’s not. It’s just war by other means, on other battlefields.

On Friday, an ESPN program, “Outside the Lines” made public a 3-year investigation into Michigan State University’s (MSU’s) inaction on claims of sexual harassment in its athletic department. Here is the takeaway: (emphasis by Wrongo)

…an Outside the Lines investigation has found a pattern of widespread denial, inaction and information suppression of such allegations by officials ranging from campus police to the Spartan athletic department, whose top leader, Mark Hollis, announced his retirement on Friday. The actions go well beyond the highly publicized case of former MSU athletic physician Larry Nassar.

It is unclear where the investigation into MSU will lead. The state of Michigan, the NCAA and the US Department of Education are now all interested in what appears to have been a systematic effort to cover up sexual abuse by athletes at MSU. Larry Nassar has gone to jail for life. Note that he was a faculty member in MSU’s athletic department. The university president and the athletic director have already resigned.

Protecting the MSU brand was more important than justice for the women who suffered at the hands of Nassar, or the school’s football and basketball teams. It is more than a culture of indifference; it was systematic obstruction of justice designed to let the players play and keep the stink of scandal away from the athletic department. This case seems to be far worse than what occurred at Penn State.

The University’s Board of Trustees resisted calls for their President’s ouster until public pressure became too overwhelming. The Board is dominated by former MSU football and basketball players. Four of the Board’s eight members are in this category. Others at MSU must go, possibly including one of Wrongo’s favorite coaches, Tom Izzo, head coach of the basketball team. But is firing a head coach enough? How many have to go?

How do we cauterize the wound that is sexual harassment in America’s universities?

Time now to bring to justice all those who enabled a monster. He didn’t abuse those women in a vacuum. Many more should be behind bars:

Add Michigan State to the abusers who shout the mantra:

USA Gymnastics gets a perfect 10 on their routine:

Trump’s $25 billion opening ask for the Wall shows who really is dreaming:

The GOP’s plan is to undermine Mueller and the FBI:

Few things are harder to understand than Evangelicals minimizing Trump’s dalliances:

Trump, in an extraordinary defense of his mental capacity and fitness for office, described himself on Saturday as a ‘genius’ and ‘a very stable genius at that.’

Very Stable Genius has the Biggest Button. Very Stable Genius could probably solve the opioid crisis on his first try, if only he would try. This is Trump’s version of Nixon’s “I am not a crook.” The fact that he has to say he’s smart says he has a really big problem. And if America doesn’t believe him, it could be enough to cripple him.

If he could read, shit would really hit the fan:

The vaudeville act ends:

Trump is the best negotiator:

The two Koreas are taking about NorKo participating in the Winter Olympics. What could go wrong?

We made it through 2017! Some doubted that we could, but the sun rose in the east every day, and here we are. Tonight we hoist a drink, and say “good riddance” to 2017. The question for tomorrow is: Where are we? What follows is a brief review of 2017 in cartoons.

A final Christmas Eve word about the unwanted gifts the Trump tax cut is foisting on us. In the short term, it will stimulate consumer demand. The economy may “grow”, but our tax receipts cannot.

Soon, these tax cuts will place our government on a fiscally precarious footing. Expect the credit rating agencies (Moody’s, Standard & Poors) to start wagging their tongues, warning of their concerns about the country’s overall debt levels. It is possible that the repatriation of some of the massive off-shore profits that American firms have hoarded may come home. To the extent that they return, and some taxes are paid on them, this (one time) tax receipt will likely make the 2018 and 2019 annual budget deficits somewhat smaller than the colossal ones to follow.

After that, the government’s income will fall, and we will hear bi-partisan calls for deficit reduction, and lower spending targets will be the norm. The effects of tax legislation can take a long time to shake out, and there often are unintended effects.

But make no mistake, the GOP will start talking about the Coming Debt Apocalypse next month.

Who Inspires Wrongo

Who is the Wrongologist?

The Wrongologist is a Managing Director of the Ledgewater Group, owner of the Wrongologist Blog. Previously for 11 years, he was a division president for a $14+ billion S&P 500 company, managing 1000 employees in multiple locations. Earlier, he was managing director for an investment banking firm, specializing in technology companies. He spent 14 years as a VP in the Asia Banking Group for a top 3 US bank. He served as an officer in the US Army during the Vietnam era, leading a nuclear missile unit. The Wrongologist enjoys road biking and showing dogs in AKC events. He holds a degree in Foreign Service from Georgetown University.

Quotes We Like

I don’t have the time to waste in these arguments any longer. I can feel the clouds gathering on the horizon. The storm is coming, and when it does, there will be no time left for pointless arguments and accusations.